The Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras has signalled he is hopeful that tonight’s eurogroup meeting will produce what members of his government often like to call “white smoke.”

Emerging from a tripartite summit of Greek, Israeli and Cypriot leaders in Thessaloniki, the leftist leader told the country’s news agency:

“In the end the good [guys] win.”

The cryptic sound-bite is being interpreted as the first sign of concrete optimism from the leader over Greece’s debt deal.

The Greek media is now reporting it is only a matter of time before the bailout review is formally wrapped up. The big question, it says, is the message euro area ministers will send to markets regarding mid-term debt relief.

‘Sentiment towards UK retailers is remarkably fragile at the moment, and any signs of a consumer squeeze are being seized upon as a reason to take a big red pen to the share prices of companies in this sector. Retailers are undoubtedly facing tough times as inflation looks set to hit household budgets, however the market’s extreme response smacks of a knee-jerk reaction to one piece of retail sales data, when only a month ago these same figures were being celebrated for their resilience.

Against this background the Bank of England looks out of step to be seriously considering raising interest rates, when economic data is pointing towards a consumer slowdown. Indeed the central bank has itself highlighted weaker consumer spending as a key risk to the UK economy, so now this particular chicken is coming home to roost, it’s strange that the Bank of England is thinking about releasing the foxes. For the moment the balance of power still rests with the doves in the MPC however, and it’s worthy of note that expectations of an interest rate rise have been confounded for many years now.’

Helena Smith reports from the Greek capital:

Today’s euro group is starting on a note of optimistic with even Greece’s embattled finance minister saying he is hopeful that today’s proceedings will end well. But whatever emerges this evening will be far from what the increasingly embattled Greek government had in mind.

As euro area finance ministers prepared for this afternoon’s crucial Euro group, pensioners from across Greece gathered before the country’s parliament in Syntagma square to protest against the extra cuts they now stand to suffer following legislation of additional austerity measures last month.

Most, like Nikos Agnagnostopulos, were in their eighties. “I came into Athens from the Peloponnese because the fight has to go on,” he said.

“As a builder I paid into my fund for nearly 50 years and now they have reduced my pension by 50%. With the next round there will be nothing left.”

Prime minister Alexis Tsipras’ leftist-led coalition agreed to pre-legilsate cuts that as of 2019 will see some pensions being reduced by a further 18 percent in exchange for 7.5 bn euro in loan disbursements that single currency finance ministers are expected to sign off today. With maturing debt due next month, the tranche is vital if Greece is to, once again, avert default. But the emergency funds are a far cry from the debt relief Tsipras insists is absolutely necessary if the recession-hit Greek economy is ever to recover.

“At the very least we are expecting what they agree to give us to be bigger than the forthcoming debt owed,” said one Syriza MP adding that a bigger tranche would automatically stimulate the real economy.

“We were told [by Tsipras] in no uncertain terms that the qui pro quo for supporting measures that went beyond those initially agreed in this [bailout] programme would be debt forgiveness. A lot of us are enraged that while we have kept to our side of the deal, they [creditors] have not kept to theirs.”

Ahead of the today’s meeting Tsipras had urged lenders to “respect the rules” in op eds penned for the French daily Le Monde and German Die Welt. “We expect our lenders to respect the rules that they, themselves, came up with,” he wrote. “ To respect my country. To respect Greece.”

Greece close to debt deal

Optimism is building that Greece and its creditors might finally reach a deal over its bailout today.

The eurogroup meeting is getting underway in Luxembourg, and several ministers have expressed hopes that Athens might finally get its next aid tranche. This loan has been held back for months, as creditors demand more

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble told reporters:

“I remain confident that we will find an agreement today on the payment of the latest tranche.”

However, Schauble also dampened hopes of a breakthrough on debt relief today.

French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire was also upbeat, saying:

“It’s a question of goodwill and it’s a question of willingness. If everyone around the table makes a very slight and positive move in the right direction we should be able to find an agreement today,”

The IMF’s managing director, Christine Lagarde, is also attending the meeting:

On average, between April 2011 and December 2016, U.K. government-bond futures correctly anticipated the rise or fall that ultimately happened when economic data were published, according to an analysis prepared for The Wall Street Journal by Alexander Kurov, associate professor of finance at West Virginia University.....

Some senior British statisticians and policy makers have long feared that the U.K.’s wide, early distribution of data creates a much greater risk of leaks and the potential that people could trade on data ahead of their release.

For U.K. unemployment data, for instance, 118 people have prerelease access, according to the Office for National Statistics.

On the basis of all the information now available to me I consider that the public benefit likely to result from pre-release access to ONS statistics is outweighed by the detriment to public trust in those statistics likely to result from such access.

FxMacro (@fxmacro)

U.K. STATISTICS AUTHORITY TO END EARLY ACCESS TO DATA FOR GOVT no more leaks!

The Bank of England doesn’t actually have to raise rates to influence the markets. It can make signals, and encourage investors to change their views, through a narrow vote on the MPC.

She says:

It is an open question as to whether either Saunders and or McCafferty would have predicted a rate hike at today’s meeting had they still been in their former roles as a market and industry economist respectively. This is to say that, with monetary “hawks” likely to remain in the minority, even in the face of a strong inflation overshoot, the importance of the wider vote split is in the market signalling, not in the probability of an actual rate hike near term.